Chapter 17 The Girl Who Opened the Skies
The Girl Who Opened the Skies
Jesstin stood naked by the window of the rented room of Man’s Envy, the club next door to his.
He cringed at the crunch of shifting sheets behind him.
He’d hoped to be gone before Marissa woke, because he had no stamina for conversation.
After two nights with a woman, a man either had intentions or lacked honor.
His intentions went no further than flirting his way into her bed, and any talk of honor? Really?
But how could he tell her he’d murdered his own half brother to spare the woman he loved, and that, in the drunken distortion of a dim tavern, Marissa resembled Elloven just enough to send the pain away for a few hours?
And how, in the clarity of sunrise, he wanted to claw off his own skin to erase the sin of lying with a woman who was not his heart.
“I have to go,” he said, heading off anything Marissa might say that would create even more of a situation.
“No pub owner works at dawn,” she said through a protracted yawn.
His shame notwithstanding, it wasn’t work waiting for him but a two-year-old boy who would wake up soon and be scared if Jesstin wasn’t there when he did. Until he figured out what to do with him, his well-being was Jesstin’s responsibility.
“Mm, come back to bed. Nothing good happens this early. Except...”
Jesstin had gone straight from the embers of the Edevane estate to the Envy, his first drink gone before he’d even sat down.
He was four deep when Marissa sidled up to the bar beside him, sending clear signals.
He hadn’t looked at her head-on. It was her crimson curls he’d coveted, from the corner of his eye, as she’d answered questions he hadn’t asked, which slowly drew him further from the haunted loathing in Elloven’s eyes when she’d found him in Castien’s office.
Until that moment, he hadn’t realized he’d still been holding onto the faint hope they might find their way back to each other.
They’d left so much unsaid that night in the swamp.
But her eyes had said everything in that office.
And he saw, finally, that in sparing her this horror, he had lost her forever.
The only way he’d ever known how to move on was to throw himself into the deepest of waters and learn to swim while knowing, on some level, he was still going to drown.
As for Marissa, she wasn’t in the trade or searching for a beau, just a bored young woman from a decent family looking for another reason to undermine her overbearing father.
They’d used each other. There was nothing more to it.
And in the light of day, Marissa in fact looked nothing like Elloven at all.
“I can’t,” he said and pushed away from the window. “Sorry.”
Marissa audibly pouted from the bed. Jesstin gathered his clothes and started dressing.
When he reached for his shirt, he noticed a thin line of soot under his pinky fingernail, and blood rushed to his head.
He’d missed it somehow, even after scrubbing his skin raw to erase that night.
But no amount of soap and water could make him forget the look of betrayal on Elloven’s stricken face when she’d walked in on him holding the bloodied blade he’d used to kill Castien.
The disbelief. The treachery. The sadness that was almost mutual understanding.
But seeing her again had triggered his instinctual drive to run as fast and far as he could, desperate to replace that look with anything else.
But his tryst with Marissa had replaced nothing. He could fuck a hundred women, a thousand. Everything he’d actively done to drive Elloven Hawthorne from his heart had only embedded her deeper. Her absence was a wound that would never, ever close.
“I may just stay here for a bit,” Marissa said. She flopped back onto the bed. “The room is ours until afternoon tea?”
Jesstin cleared the emotion from his throat. “Yes.”
“I have three seamstress appointments today, which tires me so, and tomorrow, Mother is dragging me to the Cantwells’ again, and I will very much need a distraction after listening to the old woman chatter about her six poodles. Tomorrow then?”
“Um.” He was on his third attempt at fastening the last button on his shirt and ripped it off in frustration. “Fuck.”
“That’s the idea,” she said smoothly.
Jesstin chucked the button into the corner and turned in a fluster. His concentration was all over the place, and he couldn’t even recall what he’d been trying to do. “Not tomorrow.”
Her mouth curled in disappointment. “When then?”
“We won’t be seeing each other again.” He tucked his shirt in, then noticed he’d buttoned it all wrong. “Curse it all to hell,” he hissed with a churlish grunt.
“Are you all right?” She sat, wrapping the blanket around herself. “You don’t seem to be.”
“Fine,” he barked.
When she didn’t respond, he cringed at his needless cruelty, gathered himself, and finally looked at her. “I’m fine, but I really have to go.”
“Did you mean it when you said you don’t want to see me again?”
“Don’t ask it like that,” he said, shaking his head at her.
“Like what?”
“Like this is more than what it is.”
She squinted one eye at him. “You have a wife, don’t you?”
He heard the heart-ripping sound of Elloven screaming his name from through the fire.
She was still screaming for him when Sesto dragged her away, while Jesstin watched from behind a tree, paralyzed in the certainty it was her fear compelling her, that when she was safe again and the moment was behind her, she’d realize what he already knew.
She’d remember how she’d felt in the office.
“Yes.”
“Oh,” she said with a hmph. “That must be Elloven.”
Jesstin paled. “How do you know that name?”
“Is that not what you called me when you were fucking me?” Marissa blinked rapidly.
“I have to go,” he said again and did so before the conversation dragged any further.
Sesto followed a stormy Jesstin up the back steps of the Golden Spiral.
He’d been in one of his moods since the night of the fire but had adroitly maneuvered any of Sesto’s attempts to talk about it.
Sesto’s hesitant confession about what he’d told Elloven had just led to more of the same brusque irritation.
An unlit fuse sitting dangerously close to the fire.
Jesstin, in fact, seemed worse than he’d ever been, in Sesto’s estimation, and while he could make pointed assumptions about everything going on in the poor man’s head, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Jesstin was never more self-destructive than when his misanthropy reached critical mass, and the conspicuous redhead he’d been taking to bed the past two nights was the tipping point that had convinced Sesto he’d rather have Jesstin pissing mad than lose him altogether.
And oh, how he dreaded what the tempestuous boy would say or do when he saw the ambush waiting in his apartment. The timing was either impeccable or terrible, but it would be a miracle if he stayed long enough to hear why he should listen—or care.
“What the fuck is this, Sesto?” Jesstin’s gruff holler drifted down the stairs. “Who are these people in my kitchen?”
“Ah, yes. You see, there’s a very interesting story to be told here, years in the making you might say, though I was only brought into it quite recently—”
“Sesto. Stop.” Jesstin stood stock-still in the doorway, staring at the five strangers waiting. Four sat, and the fifth leaned against a cupboard.
Everyone perked at Jesstin’s entrance. One jumped from her chair and gestured for him to sit, her gaze incredulous, like the man was the king himself.
The oldest, a poised, middle-aged woman with golden hair tied back in a braid, stood. “If I told you how long I’ve waited for this, you’d never believe me.”
“Who are you?” Jesstin demanded, but his tone was remarkably less annoyed. He sounded almost scared.
“You’ll remember me. I should remember you. I was only ten when you left, but now we finally understand why I don’t. And why most of the others don’t either.” She held out a hand, which Jesstin only stared at. “Nara Skylark, daughter of your brother, Emrys. You’re my uncle.”
Jesstin spun toward Sesto, bewildered. His anger was back. “Is this funny?”
“Artificial ignorance does not become you, Jess. Look at her. You’re itching for a fight, but perhaps you’d rather listen this time?”
“This. Is. Not. Possible.” Jesstin squeezed the words through his clenched jaw. “If it was, I trust you would have already told me.”
“Ah.” Sesto wrinkled his lips. “If I had known before a couple of days ago—”
“Days? Days?”
“Uncle, it’s not Sesto you’re upset with, or even us,” Nara said with gentle patience.
Sesto could easily see how she’d made a name for herself teaching gifted children in the Sepulchre how to manage their magic according to the kingdom’s rules of use.
“Will you at least sit and hear us out before you decide this is a trick?”
“I’m fine here,” Jesstin stated. “Tell me who you all are and what you want.”
Nara raised her brows and nodded. “This is Cat, my cousin.”
“Hello, Uncle Brother,” the tearful woman said in a near whisper. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Jesstin’s hand gripped his neck. He pressed his hip to the doorframe with a harsh breath.
“And my son, Wyat,” Caterina said. She touched the boy’s arm. “He’s just had his thirteenth nameday.”
“Son,” Jesstin ground out.
“Tyreste.” The man standing at the cabinet spoke next. “Cat’s twin. My daughter, Clarissant.” He nodded at a young woman not much younger than Jesstin.
“Hello!” The girl’s enthusiasm was misplaced in the somber room, but she didn’t seem aware of it. “I cannot wait to hear your story.”
“My daughter,” Tyreste said, continuing with a cautionary throat clearing, “is here because she cannot seem to mind her business. At all. Ever.”
Clarissant grinned and swept her blonde curls away from her flushed face. “I’m here because I am also a Jesstin Believer.”
“I’m sorry, a what?” Jesstin scoffed. “What the hell is happening here?”